By popular request

Here's another recipe for you, and it's one of my own. I am especially happy with this little beauty, as it is quite simply gorgeous.

That does sound completely immodest, but one of the things that tickles Amy, my co-soupmonger, is when I do the tastings each morning before the soups go out. A lot of the time, the tasting will result in a happy instinctive exclamation of "oh! That's gorgeous!", which is just my natural reaction to tasting something fabulous, and is most emphatically NOT an immodest appreciation of my cooking abilities.

So, by request, then, is this little gem:

Union of Genius Broccoli with bacon and chilli

2 large onions
2 large leeks
2 medium potatoes
2 heads of broccoli
4 cloves garlic
300ml whole milk
200g bacon lardons, cooked until crispy
0.5 - 1 tsp chilli flakes
ham stock
pepper, salt (if required)
1 tsp butter
1 dessertspoon vegetable oil

Rough-chop all the vegetables and saute in the butter and oil. Cook for 10 mins. Add the milk and top up to around 2L with boiling water and ham stock, or ham stock base (depends if you are using fresh or ready-made stock). Add the chilli flakes. Simmer for 30 mins, and blend. Add the bacon lardons and leave to sit for about 30 mins. Reheat and check seasoning; add pepper but only salt if required. The soup should be deeply savoury and creamy with a little chilli kick. The dominant flavour shoud be broccoli, with deep bacon background. The chilli should be a minor flavour note, not dominant at all.

I should say that of all the recipes on the blog, overall quantities of the soups are a little tricky. My own recipes make 10 litres at a time and I scale them down here, but - as with any recipe - the real pleasure is in the tinkering. Enjoy!